Success Stories

I just finished a six-week course at Providence Hospital, called "Optimizing Health". This is a class for chronically ill patients. It helps you understand your "new" life. How to cope with your stress, pain, healthier eating, exercising safely and understanding and using your medications. The most important part for me was learning how to voice my concerns to my family – friends and to the medical community. To understand your life has changed – to accept this to a point – to learn to deal with the new limitations.

This class was a wonderful chance to meet other people with all types of conditions. To listen and learn how they deal with it and that you are not alone in this. That there are so many out there worse off than you. This helps in dealing with your own – if they "can do it" so maybe you can, too!

It was also a great social time with very nice instructors.

If this class is offered again at Providence or other hospitals, it would help a lot of your chronically ill patients to suggest it to them. This course was free, also – which is important for disabled-lower income patients.